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August 18, 2012
Question

Lightroom 4 crashes on import

  • August 18, 2012
  • 7 replies
  • 23981 views

Windows 7, Home Edition, version 6.1 service pack 1

Intel 7, with more than 400gb memory available

I've now spent more than 32 hours trying to solve this problem, including two phone calls and three chat sessions with Adobe Help Desk.  The Help desk takes me through the same checklist of "fixes" as the previous calls and inquiries and has resulted only in wasting more hours of my time. 

To date I have tried the following to fix this issue:

- uninstall and reinstall with and without the LR 4.1 update

- create a new administrator account on my machine and run LR off the new account instead

- create a new catalogue for every import (which kind of defeates the purpose of having LR to begin with)

- wipe out my old preferences file and allow LR to create a new one

- completely wipe my hard drive and reinstall EVERYTHING all over again

- rebuild my catalogues from scratch on a new, fresh install of lightroom

- limit my cache size in LR preferences

- limit my backups in LR preferences

- change my 1:1 previews

- attempt to import images from a Nikon 90, D3s and D800 only, each on a fresh LR install (in an effort to see if it was a particular camera model causing the issue)

- attempted to only import directly from another hard drive, rather than an external or internal card reader

Each time I have no more than a day of proper working conditions before the program hangs up and windows pops up a warning that the program has ceased to respond and must close.  Lightroom is rather useless if I can not import images.

I'm out of solutions or fixes, and out of patience now too.  I'd really like to continue using Lightroom products because of how integral it is to my workflow.  At this point I'm ready to switch to a competitor if this issue can not be solved.

This topic has been closed for replies.

7 replies

Participant
September 9, 2016

FINALLY SOLVED!!!!!

After spending hours and hours searching, reading, trying, installing and uninstalling I solve my problem.

Name of the event problem:                APPCRASH

Name of the application:                     lightroom.exe

Version of the application:                  5.3.0.10

Mark of the time of the application:        529d013a

Name of module with errors:             dvamarshal.dll

This was happening every time I tried to import a certain amount of pictures, it just allowed me to import 5 or 6 at a time.

This is what I did, and worked for me:

  1. Download the file: “ dvamarshal.dll “ from  http://dllyes.com/dvamarshal-dll/
  2. Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.3, or wherever you have the Lightroom installed, and rename the existing file; "dvamarshal.dll" to "dvamarshal1.dll"
  3. Copy the file downloaded from the link above, and paste it.
  4. Close the program, and restart the computer.
  5. Open the application as an administrator, and for me it worked!!!

Hope it helps

Participant
August 12, 2014

Crazy!

Lightroom was crashing every time I hit IMPORT. After reading this forum, I discovered that my iPhone was connected to my PC. Once I disconnected it, Lightroom worked just fine again.

Strange, considering I just upgraded to 5.6 and it was still crashing when my iPhone was connected.

Inspiring
May 14, 2014

I have the same problem. Clicking on Import resulted in an immediate 'Lightroom Not Responding' message. The problem appears ONLY if my smart phone or my camera is plugged in to USB ports. To import I must first copy files from the camera or the phone to the hard drive, unplug them, and only then open Lightroom and import the files from the hard drive.

(Lightroom 5.3 64 bit, Windows 7 Home)

Participant
April 14, 2014

I had a similar problem and found a solution. Lightroom 4.4 on Windows 7 would crash after I hit "Import" before reaching the import window. I had my smart phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) plugged in to my computer and by unplugging it I stopped getting the error. Everything went fine after that, including importing from CF card and simultaneously backing up to an external hard drive.

Participant
April 27, 2013

I have this LR4 freezing problem. I'm just coming to the last 10 days of the trial period on Windows 8 64bit, and I was seriously considering buying it to complement PS Elements. However, in the last week, it has begun to freeze up for minutes on end when I make some mouse or keyboard input. The whole LR4 application locks solid, I can't minimize it, move it on screen, or close it. If I wait, sometimes up to 10 mins, it usually comes back to life, often only to freeze a short while later (sometimes on next mouse use). If I don't feel like waiting indefinitely, I have to kill it with Taskmaster. The rest of the computer's applications are unaffected, and neither CPU nor memory appears to be under any load (there's 12 GB RAM, so no shortage).

When this problem first started, I uninstalled LR4, cleaned the registry, and rebooted before reinstalling it. I also took ownership of my image folders. The new installation froze as I was selecting folders to import for the first time, unfroze after a couple of minutes, then froze again when I tried to look at the application settings/preferences. I don't feel inclined to risk messing up my USB devices (mouse, keyboard, touch pad, bluetooth, iPod, Android, camera, memory stick, etc.) by uninstalling my USB hubs or drivers. Adobe should be able to write software to handle such things, and multi-threading should allow the main application to run effectively regardless of such external hardware IO access.

There's no point my purchasing this application as it is, although I liked it when it was working. It would be nice to have some indication whether Adobe is working on a fix for this problem, and if so, when it is likely to be available. Otherwise, I'll spend my money elsewhere.

Pete.Green
Community Manager
May 1, 2013

Hi Dave lorde,

Do you get an error dialog for Lightroom crashing?

Also which version of Lightroom are you using? Have you tried with Lightroom 4.4 yet?

You might also try downloading the Lightroom 5 beta that is available now on labs.adobe.com and see how it works on your system there.

As for the current issues, my suggestions are as follows:

0. Make sure you're up to date with LR 4.4 or LR5 beta

1. Take a look through our performance optimization documents for Lightroom and see if any of these suggestions give you something to work with:

Optimize LR performance

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

Performance Hints

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/performance-hints.html

2. Try resetting Lightroom's preferences: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/recover-catalog-images-resetting-lightrooms.html#id_90046

3. Try Lightroom in a new administrator user to see if the hangs continue.

Let us know how it goes,

regards,

Pete

Participant
May 1, 2013

Hi Pete,

The problem wasn't crashing as such, but hanging unresponsive for arbitrarily long periods. If left long enough, it would recover.

The version was Lightroom 4.4.

I tried all the sensible suggestions on the knowledgebase.

However, the problem now appears to be solved.

It turns out that a rogue Intel Rapid Storage Technology (SATA) service was leaking memory, and was using up to 2GB of working RAM. My Dell PC has 12GB of RAM, so overall RAM levels didn't seem to be a problem. However, since I have replaced this rogue service with an updated version, Lightroom no longer hangs. I don't know why only Lightroom would become so totally unresponsive (I could run Photoshop Elements and other memory-hungry or memory intensive programs normally), but Lightroom does seem to be particularly sensitive to this. Maybe it needs large amounts of contiguous memory, I don't know. It may be a Windows 8 memory management peculiarity.

So my particular Lightroom problem is now resolved, and there is a useful lesson that Lightroom may suffer serious hang problems when other memory hogs are running - even if there is apparently plenty of free memory available.

So thanks for the assistance.

Pete.Green
Community Manager
August 21, 2012

Hi Kat,

Since you're running into this issue with Lightroom crashing on import in Windows,

can you provide me with crash reports to send to the team so we can investigate further the cause of the crashes?

Click this link: http://bit.ly/NgcMBH

This will direct you to a secure page with a direct download link to a zip file.

Download the .zip file and extract it to its own folder.

Follow the directions in the Readme.exe included in the .zip

Email the crash dumps you get to petgreen (at) adobe (dot) com in the bug report.

Let me know what you can do!

Thanks

Pete.Green
Community Manager
August 23, 2012

Kat,

I've sent you an email directly in addition to this response.

We've worked with one user directly -- http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_4_crashes_on_importing_files#topic_3813877

He uninstalled his USB controllers from device manager in windows 7, as well as uninstalling his USB hubs from device manager.


Rebooted computer, allowed windows to reinstall the drivers, then LR was able to import with success several times, when it wasn't working at all even once.

See if you can try something similar with your setup and let us know how it goes

Thanks!

Pete

Victoria Bampton LR Queen
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 19, 2012

Oh dear, you have had a time of it!  So sorry to hear that!

One thing you didn't mention - what else is plugged into the computer?  Any phones or tablet pc's nearby?  Networks drives?  Cloud storage?

Is it only at import that it hangs?  Does it hang with the Import dialog open or at what stage?  Is the Import dialog populated with previews?

And it's hanging when you're importing from the hard drive too?

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
August 19, 2012

I've tried both with and without my external hard drives connected to the computer. I have no phone, tablets or any other peripheral connected.  It hangs and crashes when I import from internal and external hard drive.  I've tried experimenting with different speed external hard drives to see if reading the drives was the issue.

The same issue happens whether I import from a card or hard drive.

The import dialogue screen opens, but it freezes before the drive(s) or cards are read.  Generally it won't even get to the point of generating previews.

If I wipe out my preferences and completely rebuild the catalogue, I can sometimes get a full day of use out of the program before it hangs again.

Victoria Bampton LR Queen
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 20, 2012

Call_me_frustrated_kat wrote:

If I wipe out my preferences and completely rebuild the catalogue, I can sometimes get a full day of use out of the program before it hangs again.

Ok, what changes just before it stops working, after it's been working all day?  Or what might you have been doing before it stops working?  If you reboot at that point, does it help?  There has to be something - a conflict with something.  Is it often the same time of day?  Is your computer on a network?  I realise we're clutching at straws here, but it looks like the tech's already ruled out most of the likely issues.

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen